


Cold Snap

by Griselda_Gimpel



Series: Rebuilding Ishval [4]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Canon - Manga, Canon Compliant, Canon Continuation, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, First Dates, Fluff, Ishbal | Ishval, Just Add Kittens, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Promised Day, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Slash, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 16:41:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16288160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Griselda_Gimpel/pseuds/Griselda_Gimpel
Summary: Scar tries to get Miles to help him with a problem, but the kittens they adopted have other ideas. Also contains the story of how Scar and Miles became a couple.





	Cold Snap

**Author's Note:**

> There wasn't enough Scar/Miles fan fic.

                It was the cold snap that did it. Even during the winter, days in Ishval tended toward hot, but the temperature fell during the night, and sometimes there would be a cold snap and things would get very cold. There was a cold snap the first midwinter night after the Day of Reckoning, and the next morning, Scar and his team of alchemist-engineers found two miles of aqueduct pipe in shattered pieces.

                Repairing the pipe took all day, and at the end of it, Scar still didn’t know _why_ the pipe had shattered. The aqueduct system wasn’t complete yet, but Scar’s team had been running tests on it the previous day, making sure that the sandstone piping didn’t leak anywhere through its length. It hadn’t. Everything had been fine. Then the team had left for the day, the sun and temperature had gone down, and the pipe was in pieces by the next morning.

                The problem was that Scar didn’t have training as an engineer. When it came down to it, he didn’t even have training as an alchemist. He led the team out of necessity; there simply wasn’t anyone else.

                Oh, there were Amestrian alchemist-engineers, of course. A team of them had been sent by Brigadier General Mustang in the early days of the reconstruction. They’d been arrogant and condescending and not terribly helpful. And they’d demanded exhortative wages. That’s where the situation had gotten sticky. With Brigadier General Mustang pushing for democratic elections, Führer President Grumman was anxious to keep the cost to the taxpayers down. He’d suggested a loan program, that Ishval could repay (with interest) in the future, but Major Miles had been dead set against it. The end result, when no other agreement could be reached, was that the Amestrian alchemist-engineers left and Scar ended up in charge of a team that he was still training even as they rebuilt their homeland.

                They had books, at least. Major General Armstrong had lent them numerous books from the Armstrong private library, and Scar poured through texts on statics and fluid dynamics whenever he had a chance. His team did the same, and with the knowledge they pooled together, they’d underlined the first rebuilt city of Ishval with a state of the art sewer system. The next big project the team was undertaking was the aqueduct system that would bring in water from Mt. Briggs, and everything had been going smoothly enough until the cold snap had snapped two miles of pipe into several thousand pieces. Scar was stumped. He’d never known even the coldest Ishvalan nights to shatter stone before.

                As Scar headed to the home he shared with Major Miles and now seven cats, he reflected that the alchemist-engineers weren’t the only discipline facing problems. It was the same all over. Ishval had too few trained doctors and too few trained farmers and too few trained chefs and too few trained everything. So many lives had been lost, and the survivors had spent years living on the edges of society, barely scraping by.

                Efforts were being made to bring the region’s collective knowledge base up. There were students of medicine studying under the handful of trained doctors the hospital had. Winry Rockbell’s master had taken on a dozen additional apprentices who were studying automail in Rush Valley, all with plans to return home with the knowledge they gained. Major Miles spent much of his day training new soldiers, and Scar had his team of alchemist-engineers. Still, it was going to take decades to undo the damage the State Alchemists had done in less than a year.

                As soon as Scar opened the door, Miles saw the look on his face, grabbed a kitten, and handed it to Scar. It was Briggs, whom Scar wrapped around his neck like a scarf. Miles and Scar had adopted a mama cat (whom they simply called Mama Cat) and her kittens, which they had named Delight of Ishvala, Cat May, Desert Flower, Briggs, Major General, and Bear. The cats had all been a great addition to the household, and they had the added benefit of distracting the news people who’d been stalking Scar ever since Grumman had pardoned him. (Internal polling at the newspapers had revealed that pictures of cats were more popular with readers than pictures of Scar, which was a perfectly fine conclusion as far as Scar was concerned.)

                “Rough day?” Miles asked.

                “Yeah,” Scar said. “The aqueduct pipe going north broke. I’m hoping you can help me get to the bottom of what happened. But first, how was your day?”

                “A lot better than yours,” Miles said. “I finally had a chance to get down to the courthouse. I’m now officially Miles Keystone.” (Scar had legally changed his name to Ezekiel Keystone after coming back to Ishval, even if most everyone still called him Scar. Miles had opted to change his name because his first name was ‘Bradley’, and he had come to despise it.)

                “Wonderful,” Scar said, and started to feel a little better. That was the thing about rebuilding Ishval with Miles. Even when there were setbacks, there were still reasons for him to use words like ‘wonderful’. He had found that he was smiling more, and he sometimes even laughed.

                “Yeah, it is,” Miles said. “I think I’m still going to have the soldiers call me Major Miles, though. The Major General would probably find it a terrible breach of protocol, but it’s how I’m used to being addressed. So what happened with the pipe?”

                A rush of happiness hit Scar. The pipe might have broken, but he had Miles to help him get to the bottom of the mysterious mishap. Scar remembered fondly how he and Miles had become a couple. Miles had nearly gotten heatstroke – he wasn’t used to hot temperatures – and after Scar had helped him, Miles had insisted on taking Scar out to dinner. Of course, it hadn’t been a fancy dinner by any means. Food in Ishval came from rations handed out by Briggs soldiers, but Scar and Miles had enjoyed their spam, biscotti, and concentrate prune juice _together_ , and that was what mattered.

                After the dinner had finished, Miles had asked, “May I kiss you?”

                “Yes,” Scar had said, and Miles had.

                “So,” Miles had said, after the kiss had ended. “What’s the proper Ishvalan way to ask someone to go steady?”

                “The rules of courtship?” Scar had asked. “Well, you state your intentions to the person, and if they’re interested, you-“ He had looked down. “-you ask their parents.”

                “Oh.”

                “I am interested,” Scar had said. “And you could ask my master. What about your parents, Miles? Are they alive?”

                “Yes,” Miles had said, “but they don’t live in Ishval.”

                “Why don’t you ask them to come to visit? If you’re interested, that is.”

                “I will, and I am. So you’ll ask them for their permission? Because I’m thirty-six years old.”

                “No, not permission. Approval.”

                So it was that Miles had written to his parents and asked them to come to Ishval. They’d agreed and arrived a week later. It had been a rather awkward meeting. There were whispers that Scar wasn’t supposed to overhear but did.

                “Isn’t he a serial killer?”

                “He’s a priest, pop.”

                “What if someone finds out?”

                “Major General Armstrong is reason he’s here, mum.”

                Scar had pretended not to hear and had focused on the dinner he was preparing. For one night, the evening meal wouldn’t be coming from the Briggs soldiers. Scar had made shakshouka. It hadn’t been easy. Outside of rations, food was still scarce in Ishval. Private Kanda – one of the soldiers Miles was training – had hooked him up with the eggs, tomatoes, and an onion. The lawyer who’d helped Scar legally change his name had provided him with enough cumin for the meal. Instead of chili pepper and cayenne pepper, he’d been forced to do with poblano pepper and banana pepper, which were much too bland but which were better than nothing. He’d gotten the peppers from one of the new arrivals to Ishval, who’d given them to Scar as a gift. He had been utterly unable to locate any paprika and so had been forced to do without. Nevertheless, he had produced shakshouka for dinner for the four of them.

                “So, uh, Scar, was it?” Mr. Miles had asked.

                “You can call me Scar. Or Ezekiel. Either works,” Scar had said.

                “So, Ezekiel,” Mr. Miles had said. “Tell us about yourself.”

                “I really like your son,” Scar had said and then realized that he hadn’t answered the question.

                “Oh, that’s nice,” Mr. Miles had said.

                “I’d like your permission to court him,” Scar had blurted out.

                “My permission?” Mr. Miles had asked, confused, but Mrs. Miles had given a burst of laughter. Mr. Miles had looked at her, still confused.

                “He’s a proper Ishvalan lad!” she had exclaimed. “Honey, don’t you remember me telling you about how my dear old dad, may he rest in peace in Ishvala’s embrace, asked my mom out?”

                “Maybe?”

                She had turned to Scar. “My mom’s side of the family comes from Aerugo. So when my dad asked my mom’s parents for their approval to court her, oh, they thought he was a cheeky boy! He hadn’t brought a chicken, you see. My mom’s parents were rather traditional, and that was the Aerugo way. You were supposed to bring a chicken as a gift. But my dad didn’t know that, and my mom hadn’t thought of it because it was only something that boys were supposed to do. It was a huge misunderstanding and took a lot of convincing before my mom’s parents would approve of them dating.”

                “Chickens,” Mr. Miles had intoned, “aren’t the tradition in Creta. Or Amestris.”

                “Well,” Mrs. Miles had said, “you have my approval. And this is some excellent shakshouka. These are banana peppers, yes? My dad used to make it with banana peppers!”

                “Thank you,” Scar had said. “I was afraid it wasn’t going to be spicy enough.”

                “My mom didn’t like it too spicy,” Mrs. Miles had assured him.

                “Fine, fine,” Mr. Miles had grumbled. “You have my approval, too.”

                With that, Scar and Miles had become a couple.

                Scar brought his mind back to the present. Miles was asking him about what had happened to the pipe. “The pipe burst,” Scar explained. “Two miles worth of piping.”

                The two men took their seats on the living room couch, where they were promptly swarmed by the remaining kittens. Mama Cat also sat on the back of the couch. She cast the two men a dignified glance and then returned to the task of grooming herself.

                “Why don’t you walk me through the situation exactly?” Miles suggested, as Delight of Ishvala climbed onto his shoulder and began batting at his side burns.

                “This is what the pipe look like in miniature,” Scar explained, pulling a bag of sand out of the pocket of his robes. Pouring the sand onto the couch, he used his alchemy to reconstruct it into a model of the aqueduct pipe.

                “Sandstone piping, right,” Miles said. “I remember you telling me about that.”

                “Uh huh,” Scar said. He started to say more but at that moment, Desert Flower batted the sandstone model off the couch. Major General pounced on it when it hit the carpet on the floor and then Cat May picked up the model in her mouth and ran into the bedroom with it. So then Scar had to unwrap Briggs from around his neck, and Miles had to remove Delight of Ishvala from his shoulder. Then Bear got underfoot as they went after Cat May.

                They eventually located Cat May deep under the bed. Next they had to collect the various pieces of the model. Once they had them all, Scar remade the model with alchemy and guarded it zealously from the kittens, who were all looking at it with the utmost interested.

                “As I was saying,” Scar said, “there was a cold snap last night, and the pipe shattered. I’ve never seen rock shatter from the cold before.” Moving his hand quickly, he stopped Briggs from stealing the model. Scooping the kitten up, and he placed her around his neck again.

                “What were you doing with the pipe yesterday?” Miles asked, scrunching his face as Bear climbed onto his head. Bear was still a kitten, but she was showing signs of being a big kitty.

                “Fluid tests,” Scar said. “The aqueduct pipe doesn’t go the whole length to Briggs yet, but we do regular tests to make sure there’s no leakage.” He moved his hand to stop Major General from pouncing on the model. She chewed on his hand instead.

                “So you were running water through the pipe?” Miles asked, as Cat May came and sat in his lap.

                “Yes.”

                “Well, there’s your answer then.”

                “I don’t understand.”

                “Even the best sandstone piping is going to be somewhat porous,” Miles explained. “Water gets into the cracks, freezes in the cold temperatures, and breaks the piping.”

                “Oh.”

                Miles grinned. “It’s a common problem at Fort Briggs, but you grew up in the desert. I imagine you didn’t have to worry about water freezing much.”

                “I did not. How do we stop this from happening again?”

                “Insulate the pipe.”

                “How do we do that?”

                Miles picked up the model. “Imagine that, if around the pipe, there was another larger pipe. The space between the inner and out pipe contains just air, which heats up. That should stop the inner pipe from freezing.”

                Scar nodded. “Thank you, Miles. I’ll get the team started on the task tomorrow.”

                “You’re welcome.”

                The two men spent the rest of the evening playing with the kittens.


End file.
